Alibaba Cloud takes on AWS with new London data centres

Alibaba Group's headquarters in Hangzhou, China

Chinese tech giant Alibaba have expanded their cloud computing arm with two new data centres in London, their first in the UK. The centres will offer 24/7 on-site support and claim to provide more seamless global coverage than competitors Amazon Web Services and Azure.

The move comes in time for November 11 or Singles’ Day, the largest shopping event in the world. Last year the Alibaba Group handled a record-breaking 325,000 e-commerce orders per second, with the day’s revenue totalling over $25 billion.

Alibaba Cloud’s EMEA general manager, Yeming Wang, said: “Our expansion into the United Kingdom, and by extension into Europe, is in direct response to the rapidly increasing demands we have seen for local facilities within the region.

“Using AI-powered and data-driven technology, our latest data centres will offer customers complete access to our wide range of cloud services, from machine learning capabilities to predictive data analytics, ensuring that we continue to offer an unparalleled level of service. We are incredibly proud to take this latest step in our continued investment in EMEA.”

Alibaba Cloud now operates 52 availability zones in 19 regions around the world including Silicon Valley, Dubai, Frankfurt and Tokyo.

The Chinese group is currently the fifth largest cloud business after Amazon, Microsoft, Google and IBM. In China it already holds close to half the market share.